The Official 'Your Favourite Shots' Thread

This was Midhras' idea a while back, and it fits right in with the way this section hopes to work. That's because it's real simple.

1) Post your favourite 5/10/15/20 shots, with brief descriptions of why they're your favourites. Every shot must have a description, and don't just talk about the game.

2) The limit per post is 5 shots, but your total selection must be posted at the same time. So, if you've got 15 favourites, that's three posts in a row featuring five shots each. If two people end up posting at the same time then I'll fiddle the post dates so they don't overlap. What you can't do is think you've got a lifelong quota of 20 shots and just keep posting one or two when you feel like it; that means you're not taking the point of thread seriously. To be clear, the idea is that you're sharing the best shots you've taken already and discussing them.

3) Please don't post more than 20 in total, and stick to the other amounts if you don't have that many. Any post that doesn't feature five shots will be removed.

4) Don't feel you have to post more favourites than you actually have. You can post what you like quality-wise so long as it's not grossly aliased, letterboxed, watermarked, etc, but don't expect people to comment much if you go for quantity over quality. Five great shots will always be better than ten good ones.

Comments

With DET Flickr back online and all the changes happening around here, I'd like to give this thread some love. Don't know about Rule 2 though, I like the idea of a 20-shot lifetime quota. Especially if it's meant to be a long-term thread - we may not always have the same faves at different points in time.

Anyway,

This is my fave. For the look of the place and the work put in to show all the details. It was my first attempt at using SweetFX and was a massive upgrade from vanilla, in any other level it looks like bright green and purple dreamscapes. Took some time to get it *just* right here but I think it is rather iconic

Neo-Paris. This one grew on me because of Midhras. I still don't care much for the composition, it feels offkilter, but I like the selective colour and muted palette. It works well with the subtle fade-out of the buildings in the distance. For not feeling like much of a shot when I took it, it turned out pretty grand.

The water reflection shot feels surreal to me. Someone pointed out that the reflection was more like the "real world" in the colors than the top, so that the shot itself seemed to be "taken" in the surreal fantasy world. I thought it was a neat interpretation.

I've always liked this, a beautiful landscape found in a world where war runs rampant (with tanks!). Certainly not what you'd expect from that kind of game. And it gives you a welcome chance to breathe before...

"The Hunger" - this is where I was testing and learning to use DOF in Duncan & Jim's CT. I feel I may as well try to set this one up a bit...

I saw this cool-looking stairwell with shafts of light streaming in through the window and knew I had to get a shot there. I started off actually just taking empty stairwell shots to practice using the DOF, which doesn't mean much more than punching in random numbers and seeing what they do. After getting some grasp on that I needed action... I had to call the alien over. Sometimes he'll come when he hears running, that didn't work, it took 3 grenades to call him out the first time :P

This is one of the ones where I was running up and down the stairs making noise to call him over, and he came running down right behind me! Whipped around and saw that scene and it was the perfect freeze. And phew, it was nice to be able to freeze that. Couldn't have asked for a better positioning too, he's perfectly lit and in this scary-looking pose about to lunge out! I framed it up and used the DOF values I had been tweaking before, scaling back the FOV for a zoom effect and getting even more clarity on him. I'm happy with how it turned out... AND he even drooled for me.

Looking forward to seeing how this thread progresses :)Also I changed my Polynomial shot to a similarly peaceful pic, the WoT dock, for personal reasons.

/editOh, and I guess I should mention the games for each shot; 1. E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy2. Remember Me3/4. World of Tanks5. Alien: Isolation

I love the Remember Me shot mostly because that section of the game is so static that it's really something to do anything new with it. It feels less artificial with the colour grading, too. My only gripe would be the dude in the foreground. I'd have probably brought Nilin into the foreground, from the midriff up, and have her looking into the scene - enough to cover that guy completely. But then I'd probably complain that that didn't work, either.

Is Polynomial as versatile as you'd want it to be, or are there about 20 different shots and that's it? Keep meaning to try it.

>My only gripe would be the dude in the foregroundYeah, he's the reason any framing felt off to me, but honestly I like that he works as an anchor with the strong color connections.

>Is Polynomial as versatileI'm not sure what to say there as I haven't played anything to compare it with. It's pretty versatile, but random fractals are random and you won't always find something interesting. It gets hard to do something new with it.

That E.Y.E shot was one of the first ones I saw of yours that drew my eye. I really like the perspective and the changes between the original and final shot is quite impressive.

The WOT's shot of the cabin on the lake is one of my favourites of that whole set. A simple shot but very pleasing to the eye. I'm quite impressed that you can find picturesque locations like that in a game based around Tank's blowing each other up!

To be clear, the idea is that you're sharing the best shots you've taken already and discussing them.

That's fair, so long as we can revisit this concept in 2016 and call the thread "Your favorite shots from 2015." I'd be onboard for that. Just to reflect on how we've improved. If we've improved.

Dishonored - "The Great Outdoorsman"

This is memorable for me due to the conversation it inspired. The jury is still out on whether or not that discussion changed my perspective for better or for worse. The comments opened my eyes to concepts I was unfamiliar with. Things like "composition" and "the rule of thirds." Since posting that, I've become hyper aware of these things when taking screenshots. I think more about framing and positioning. Sometimes I think about it too much, rather than just going with my instinct.

Assassin's Creed 4 - "Treading Water"

Ever since I saw the contextual animation where Edward runs his fingers along the water, I wanted to take a screenshot with it. I found a time of day and sun position where the reflections looked just right. The actual boats look a little funky to me. I don't what's going on with some of those sails. But overall, I think this screenshot implies motion in a way that most of my shots do not. It's also super clean.

Bioshock Infinite - "Sex Appeal"

Dragon Age: Inquisition - "Wrath of Heaven"

(Left) I probably wouldn't have taken that shot if not for a physics glitch that caused her skirt to freak out. It would blow all over the place like there was a fan underneath her. But I thought if I slowed down time and stopped it just right, I could get it to look like one of those silly smoking ads that actually tried to make it look sexy (which to me couldn't be farther from the truth). I also liked the somewhat abstract nature of whatever is going on with the wall textures. The lighting also hit her face and clothes just perfectly here.

(Right) Well, this was my favorite ability in the game. It looks great visually, the pose is awesome, and it always packs a punch. I don't always go straight to the potrait aspect ratio because I don't play games in portrait mode. I find that aspect ratio difficult for me. But I think this is one of my best portraits. I just wish that green tinting wasn't there on her hand. And the textures could be better.

Watch Dogs - "Why So Bloomy"

This shot is memorable to me simply because of how many times it could be seen around the internet without me getting a lick of credit. After randomly discovering TheWorse's mod on Guru3D, I took a few shots and posted them in his thread. He liked them enough that he added them to his OP for the mod, but did not credit or mention me. Once that mod blew up on the internet, this shot was the headline for almost every article written about it. I was accused of stealing that shot from TheWorse so many times. Eventually I deleted it and reuploaded it so the image in his thread was a broken link. Because I'm petty like that.

Still, people associated that screenshot with why the mod looked so good, and I was proud of that. Mostly because, as it turns out, his mod had 0 impact on that screenshot. At the time, his changes mostly affected the night-time settings.

The fact that so many people were calling it "Alan Wake 2" was just a bonus :P

I like the mood of this shot. Talion looks badass walking out of that orc fortress like he owns the place. The shot implies that something is going to happen to some unsuspecting orcs.

The lighting, colors, and assets look pretty good all around, so it's a shot I use when trying to show the game off. This is usually one of my side objectives when taking screenshots, and this is a great example of that.

I wanted the shot to draw your eyes from the outside in. It's not perfectly centered at the sides though, which gives it a less than perfect feel. I did that on purpose and wasn't sure if it was the best decision. A few people mentioned it though in a positive way, so I guess I'm not crazy. I feel like this is one of the more unique shots to come from this game, which allows it to stand out a bit.

Dark Souls - "The Fortress Awaits"

When I look at that image, I think "fuck everything about this room." So that pretty much sums up Dark Souls for me.

I spent some time completely transforming this via the Cheat Engine color grading script. Normally it's much darker than this, and I liked all the details this room had to offer.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 - "Heaven and Hell"

Spec Ops: The Line - "No Man's Land

Sometimes the reason I like screenshots is simply due to how much time I put into the cheat engine tables.

(left) This is a vertical panorama made up of 16:9 shots during a cut scene (with camera control). That structure is pretty much an entire level with a boss fight inside. There's a lot of detail, but it all fits into frame without looking too busy.

(right) Pretty simple shot. I wanted to get some foot prints into the frame to help the impression that we've been walking through the desert for a while. I also wanted my character to feel pretty small in the overall shot to give a sense of scale to the scene. Not sure if any of that was successful, but I like it more than anything else I came up with in that game (though, my time was limited).

Dragon Age: Inquisition - "Anybody Home?"

I felt I needed another example of blue and orange contrast. Ultimately, I like this shot for the atmosphere. I spent a little time waiting for the flags to be positioned just right while my character was looking around in his idle animation (there aren't many of those in this game, and they're subtle).

Tomb Raider - "Hopeless"This is my wife's favorite screenshot of mine (she was there when I took it). When I asked her what she thought of it just now, she said my character looks lost and hopeless, and the black and white effect emphasizes the point.

Battlefield 3 - "Light Side vs Dark Side"

This one's pretty old, and I think I could probably redo this shot for the better(narrow FOV \ wider aspect ratio), but I still like it for what it is. I shot up a lot of the stuff on the left side, but left everything on the right side untouched. I thought it would make a neat idea for a photo, so why not a screenshot.

Skyrim - "Waiting Out the Storm"

This is one of the only Skyrim screenshots I've taken that I still like. This was an area in one of Anthemios' custom maps. It's a pretty atmospheric location, but I thought my character staring out into the storm gave the shot a little more context\meaning rather than just being a shot of some windows.

The Witcher 2 - "Battlefields of Eternity"

That is my favorite location in The Witcher 2, and I also think this is the best composition I managed to get out of that game.

Planetside 2 - "Amerish Nights"

Screenshotting this game is different than most, in that you need to survive long enough to get to the best vantage points. I spent a while using the jetpack to get to this location. The view was pretty awesome when I peaked my head over this little mountain. I had to stand here and wait a while for the moon to get into the right position. As it got lower, it lit up the whole scene and looked amazing.

Well, this process was rather depressing. I do have more favorites than that, but when I have to think about it, I can't really come up with why. I just think that when it comes to my screenshots, I lack a certain creativity with my angles and compositions. It doesn't come naturally to me, and I don't think this is something that you can learn. So what I end up with are shots that can sum up a game well in 1 image, but there's not much else to say about them. At least that's what I think. The hobby is still fun for me... but I feel like I haven't improved nearly enough for someone that's been doing this for 3 years.

Third attempt! The first time I tried writing this, I decided to pick one shot per game. I then realised that was a silly thing to do because it gave me a list of my not-really-favourite shots. Let’s not talk about the second attempt. I’ll try and keep the descriptions brief.

Selection process was pretty simple once I’d figured out what it should be. My favourite shots are the ones that can’t be repeated, or at the very least would take so long to repeat that there’d be little point in trying. That’s not the case for all of these, but the exceptions have just as long a story behind them. So… let’s get Skyrim out of the way.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - “Atlas”

This feels like the quintessential Skyrim shot, but what I really like about it is that it’s never going to be perfect. I make a pilgrimage to this spot every time I play/install the game, and the results are always that little bit better. I have a project coming up that’s going to finally require a conclusive set of Skyrim shots, and I can’t wait to see what new drama this view’s taken on. You could argue that makes it eminently repeatable, but it’s the details that always change. This took a deceptive amount of work in terms of layering camera particle effects; a lot of what appears to be distant fog is actually right in front of the lens.

The Elder Scolls V: Skyrim - “Expendable”

Much as I’d love to do this shot again with better lighting, rendering, etc, I doubt I’d get the tension right. Is the horse squaring up to the dragon, standing on hind legs to get a horizontal eyeline, as a sacrificial decoy or as part of a plan? Who has the upper hand? There are so many little accidents here that help you buy into that cliffhanger. The relatively high FOV and having the good guys flank the dragon means it isn’t as imposing as it could be - or maybe he’ll just starch these two fools and get on with his day.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - “Steam Machine”

Skyrim characters are great because they’re like a gift from your past self to your present one. You spent days getting them right and then you make a dozen backups of that save ‘cause you’ll never get them right in the same way again. Part of that’s because the screenshot you end up using as reference is such a one-off in terms of lighting, pose and mood that even if you could repeat the character, you wouldn’t know it. I’ve done hundreds of character shots in this exact location, but what puts this one over is the hair. That hair mesh should not look that good, and I didn’t think to remember at the time how on Earth it ended up doing so. Everything else, though - the permutations of light for that exact position and pose; how the surrounding cage apparatus affects it; the behaviour of the scripts that orbit other lights around the face - I know like the back of my hand.

Amour choice is obviously crucial here. I'll find a link to it later. The thing I love most about Bethesda's RPGs is the flex they give their lore - just enough that you can incorporate something like the science vs magic theme of Rise Of Legends, in this case, without it seeming ridiculous. The perfect example of this is Fallout 3's Mothership Zeta, but we can pretend this character is some kind of Dwemer gyrocopter pilot whose advanced technology belies the age and dwindling health of her race... or something.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - “Trespasser”

This is shot is so old it’s in 16:9! It shows its age, unfortunately, in the lack of advanced lighting and atmospherics, but kind of epitomises what makes Skyrim shooting so fun. You can be walking about and just decide you want a Jurassic Park style scene, spawn a couple of dragons, then muck about with their sizes in the command console. But you never have the kind of full control that might rob a scene of its naturalism or spontaneity. I had to sit and watch these two prowl about - the big one had some trouble - for some time before I even knew the shot could work, and then, as often happens in this game, it totally just clicked.

Fallout 3 - “Motorcade”

I’m saving Fallout 3 for that special week when I’ve just done some big commission, the kids are at a relative’s, and it’s just me and the Capital Wasteland. Even though I have a pretty hefty Cheat Engine script to help, it just takes that long to get up to speed. This shot’s special because I know I’d become so obsessed with ironing out the little textural kinks and improving the lighting that I’d forget to actually explore the game and discover those little sparks that set the process off. There’s almost always a ‘thing’ in a great shot that steals attention despite relying on everything else for context, and here it’s that amazing glowing fog: how it grades the distant cars and creates an almost imperceptible halo around the character, given away by just a few pixels of lighting through her hair.

This fucking room - talk about bait-and-switch. What looks like a sordid art deco temple just down the hall from Deckard’s apartment in Blade Runner is actually, when the cutscene’s over, a sparsely furnished box. The most prominent location in concept art and press materials is the most boring interior in the game. Wut?

I’d declared this ‘unshootable’ several times. The ingredients of the shot were there, but they were spaced out like those of an MMO. Jensen can’t sit down in thirdperson, and when he’s crouched it’s this weird firstperson-as-thirdperson thing you’d never dream of putting in a screenshot. Nevertheless, that’s what he’s doing here, just at the right angle to make it look like he’s watching the telly. The tricky bit was getting him into that exact position during the couple of seconds in which the blinds are half-open, creating those light bands without which the shot wouldn’t work. The blinds open automatically when you enter the room, so you have to run down the steps, switch on the TV, get in position and freeze the game, hoping that the TV’s on that one interesting slide. Ultra-wide seemed like the least feasible AR for this ‘impossible’ shot, but wide FOVs can work if the character's in that magic centre spot where distortion is at a minimum.

Rage - “Earthlings”

Several occasions after the one where I officially gave up on Rage, someone told me the mod version of the game had all the cvars unlocked… which meant spawns! That still leaves very little you can do with a game where movement - and distraction - are essential if you’re to overlook the texture problems which are literally everywhere, and so this one ‘story’ shot feels extra special. Cheap and uninspiring though ‘character looks at thing’ shots are, here’s one in which said characters and things connect with the game’s plot to make a somewhat iconic scene. Just pretend Dan Hagar’s about to send Loosum back home before he checks out that crash site. Seconds later the door opens, your character staggers out, and the events of Rage begin.

Alien: Isolation - “Killer”

Yes, well, I think we all know the story of how that Cheat Engine table came together. Amazing to think that it didn't even start with a wishlist so much as a 'don't even ask for this impossible shit' list. It must have taken, what, 20 hours to get that 'playersonly' hack to work. Worth it, though!

I did several shots in which only a tiny portion of the Alien was visible, and even a few in which it was the right portion. This had something extra, though. The point of light coming from above and the almost pitch black surroundings suggest camouflage, but more importantly confinement to the same dank prison as everyone else in the game. This isn’t that toothy grin you see in most shots, but a kind of seething, murderous unrest that punctuates all the Alien movies - this need to break quarantine and take on the universe.

GTA IV - “Liberty City Walkabout”

The trick with Dead End Thrills is to celebrate art without cheapening it like a tourist. Not always easy and seldom successful. Still, what better way to show off GTA IV than to impose on it the harsh black-and-white photography style historically synonymous with real New York City, and find that it responds in the exact same way. Pardon me for using the word verisimilitude again, but that’s precisely what IV has that puts it head and shoulders above other open worlds, with the obvious exception of V.

I like the challenge of open worlds. I don’t feel comfortable doing them a lot of the time, but that’s precisely why you should persevere. There’s little to be gained from being spoon-fed compositions as though you were walking through a theme park, which is pretty much the story of most games, including even RPGs. As with the B&W Remember Me shots I’m doing, the experiment here is to see if you take markedly different shots to those with regular colour. If not, panic.

Shadow Of The Colossus - “Quake Wars”

I thought I'd give hacking PCSX2 a try, then this happened! Just pretend there wasn't a week of excruciating PAIN in between. The hacks are hard to use, the game's hard to control, the horse is a bastard... and so the problems begin. Getting control of the game's fog became essential in a hurry because, for one thing, the emulator can't do its faux HDR properly. Everything's really washed out, and that hardly complements the PS2-era texturing. I'm also using the emulator's brightness and contrast shader to either crush or wash out the flaws. Most of the game is still awful to look at in HD, so you have to treasure anything you can get.

I like this shot because it shows off the most detailed part of the colossus and leaves the rest to the imagination, which is precisely what should be done with a game with SOTC’s limitations. It also lets you expose the full profile of the colossus without being too forensic. The sky texture also falls off nicely to leave just fog at the point where you introduce the character. I actually prefer the various minotaur colossi, but it’s so draining to try and pull these shots off that I haven’t quite cracked them yet. It says much about how majestic they still are that shots are even there to get at all.

So much has happened since this, and so much more can be done - yet I’ll never take a better shot of this game. It’s about the only action shot I’ve done which is basically perfect. The Michael Bay barrel-rolling cars are in just the right positions and locations; sparks and wreckage are absolutely everywhere; the Die Hard lens flare is bleeding in from the screen edges, suggesting pursuit without confusing the shot with cop cars. I suppose the only issue is that it doesn’t mask the polygonal downgrade the game seemed to get after Hot Pursuit.

DmC - “There Goes The Neighbourhood”

There’s a particular satisfaction in imposing order upon chaos. It took a long time to find the angle, AR and FOV to take in this opening pier area once it’s fully reconfigured by Limbo, and to do so in such a way that it has form and a space for Dante to look badass. That little bit of emptiness around him suggests that he gives nothing like the number of fucks required to be harmed by all of this madness. As a bonus, you even get one of those 'They Live' hidden messages, visible enough to be read but broken enough to feel secret.

Mirror’s Edge - “Whitewater”

Realising that it was indeed possible to rewire the main menu in UnrealEd and shoot it like a level was sweet enough, but what put it over the top was that this was Mirror’s Edge, the most over-shot game besides Skyrim and Mass Effect. I did this on three separate occasions, iirc, just to sort out the resolution, but on the third I got a bit playful and started removing parts of the map that seemed incongruous. Taking out the water had this wonderful side-effect of creating a brilliant white plane beneath the city, which sets off a scene that you’d think wouldn’t need it. It's like the light is coming from within rather than outside of it.

Killer Is Dead - “The Art Of Fighting”

Killer Is Dead is just too crazy. Maybe the only way to express that is to had a shot that, at first glance, is just too busy. Look again, though, and it’s easy enough to decipher. I like the idea of turning off background meshes and the like more than I like the results, because usually it’s just a gimmick. I guess that’s why it works here: because I didn’t actually turn off anything, the game did. The 1:1 ratio kinda pushes it to that point where it looks like a piece of standalone artwork.

Doom 3 - “Sigil”

When you install all the texture packs and enable the very broken POM support, something magical happens: Doom 3 becomes timeless. I didn’t even notice this amazing decal before the billionth time I played the game. It took even longer to notice that Doom Guy's head is on it. I love how it seems to float somewhere other than on the ground, yet there’s no doubt where that infernal red light is coming from. The way the texture compression kinda distresses it actually improves things, and the bloom is really close and sharp. A quite supernatural effect.

If JRPG was a weapon rather than a genre, this is what it would look like. BWOOM. That’s also the sound of several fraught weeks of hacking finally paying off. This shot took place in the ‘disco room’, which is that part of any game that exists purely to show off the lighting. I feel a deep dissatisfaction with the FFXIII shots as a whole, probably because I haven’t done nearly enough of these.

Space Engine - “Spectrum”

There has to be at least one Space Engine shot in here, and it has to be one which pushes the boundaries of what people consider to be space. There aren’t many elements at work here because there aren’t really that many upfront elements in Space Engine, but everything is ‘off’ and inverted in this scene. The sky looks like the ground and vice-versa, and what should be transparent is solid. The beauty of Space Engine’s simulation is that all of that happened naturally, the result of its weird alchemy of effects.

EVE Online - “The Cradle”

But is it art?? If you ever catch me saying that with a straight face, shoot that face off. It needs asking in this case, though, because I’m not sure this 'shot' qualifies. It was totally done in an SDK but uses the game’s assets and lighting. I’m not sure the scales of the ships are remotely accurate. It’s a good example of what I was saying about Space Engine, though: space is only really worth shooting when it looks like something other than space. CCP gets that, which is why its space assets have their origins in really weird things - like food! This is supposed to be space-as-underwater, and if you look closely you can start to discern the dozens of random things I had to chuck in there to get that response from the engine. The problem with CCP’s Jessica tools is that they’re too broken to ever finish one of these ‘pieces’ off.

Tomb Raider - “Show Of Strength”

Tomb Raider really is a game of two halves: outdoor and indoor lighting setups. The outdoor lighting really suffers from having no light or shadow baked into distant textures, whereas inside you have all these gorgeous shadow-casters playing off Lara’s, ahem, materials. This shot was actually very early and didn’t even involve timestop, but rather nudging Lara around a tiny shaft of light and watching her idles. I’m not even sure I noticed the light catch the string of her bow like that, but besides that, I like that this isn’t really the Lara you’re used to seeing in the game. Her posture and facial expression seem slightly at odds in this dark place, which keys into the game’s story of survival and transformation without its gory, often salacious details.

Batman: Arkham City - “My Kind Of Town”

I was a bit averse to putting environment-based Unreal shots in here because they’re so static. Arkham is very high on my to-do list now, too, since discovering how to hotsample it. Still, I’ve always really liked this one. It was a tiledshot, so I dread to think how badly the effects are messed up. It really suits the wide AR, though, the composition made that tiny bit asymmetrical to accommodate the Joker, making you a little uneasy just looking at it. Rocksteady’s art team are just so fucking good, too. Look at how, in this relatively tiny portion of the game, every inch of the environment seems hewn from the same rotten substance as its latest tenant. The trick here was to hide the massive boss battle that’s going on in the stalls.

That was well worth the wait and the read. There's so much that can be learned just from reading those descriptions and then looking at the end result. I want to subscribe to your blog where you write a little diddy like that about all your shots. Oh... wait. That used to exist!

Back To Terminus Part 1 - This is the first shot I took that is not complete garbage. I got these new confusing programs to work together and got a shot that let me know if I just listen to the people in this community and act upon their advice then the next shot I take will be better than the last. If I do that for a long time I might just get to the point where I am taken screenshots of value. I'm as fascinated with this alley as most of the folk here seem to be, its a stunning little micro environment in a game and is such a tone setter. I'll end up going back there and back there to test my skills and hope each time leads to a better shot. I was finding myself incredibly confused by SweetFX at the time, so I downloaded K-Putt's table and spent some time turning all the options off and back on one at a time, watching the changes to the game. It was a good learning experience, and thanks to K-putt for making those settings publicly available because it really helped me get my head around what I was trying to do, what actually made images look better and what just made things look terrible...that is to say, the things i had been doing up until that point. :)

Job done...time to go - This is the first time I tried to "dress" a scene. I was using Nvidia DSR to get 4k and ReShade/Master Effects Reborn to tweak and felt like I had gotten the game looking how I subjectively wanted it to look. It was time to try and set something up. I'm lucky in that I can run this at 4k with ReShade humming and still get 30+ FPS and I had been trying to get some action stuff then it struck me to explore the Assassination Concept. I went in and killed one guy, then left the area and let all the Orcs calm down. I went back and riled up some Carrigors and led them to the Orcs, to give them something to agro towards that wasn't my character. I turned him around to make it look like he was leaving and hit that timestop, hopping the Orcs would magically be in a good position for the shot to work. I'm happy with how it turned out, given the lack of direct input you can have due to asset placement at times.

Dungeon - This shot make me sad. I like the shot given that I took it on my second or third day of screenshotting but looking at it now it lacks so much. If I had gotten my head around ReShade and had that up and running the colours would be more present, it would be sharper and all that stuff. Right now its a reminder that I will always know more next week than I did last week. I might go back and retake it...at the very least do something similar stylistically but who knows. It was originally a shot of jim2point0's that made me want to take it but being new I was scared of the kind of scenes that jim seems to tackle with such ease, so I retreated to something basic, with symmetry and safety in abundance. I'd like to think I'm braver now. Still though, its a benchmark shot for me and I still like it.

Killer Is Red - My first shot to make it into the Flickr Group and the first shot I took that really made me think I can do something nice in this medium.This game is enormous fun to shoot, so different to everything else I have done so far. More chaotic and frantic, so a fun challenge but also something that is easy to get lost in and detract from a finished image. One3rd's guide was a boon here and I have been making double runs on levels, some images with Reshade, then going back again and getting aggressive in areas where I know i need the double Hud removal of the debug and GeDoSaTo. This was one of the latter. Stylistically the game at points swerves very close to one of my all time favourite animes , Karas, so I feel right at home shooting it. I know I am gonna go back to this game over and over again to shoot.

Eye Of A Storm - This shot is a shamble of shapes and colours, but it still retains those two central figures trapped in a fight. I love that. I love the natural framing of the fire effects and the lines of light caused by the effects and the splatters of white and red. It adds a lot of implied movement which works given the fight going on. I also like that I realised if I had the right combination of camera height and FOV while looking straight down that the ground texture would completely disappear. I'm really happy with this shot...if it were tidied up a little bit you could have a nice poster or t-shirt design.